Chapter 165. In My Heart
The members gathered around me with gloomy expressions.
For the first three days or so, they had looked hopeful, saying tomorrow would go well, but now it seemed their spirits had run dry.
At first, I was dumbfounded, but thinking about it again, I felt a little sorry for them. The me from my first life had been far worse than they were.
In both character and skill.
It might make me seem my age for the first time in a while, but as their senior in life, I ought to help.
“If you want to make money anywhere, you need to understand the characteristics of the industry.”
“Industry?”
“The place we’re in is show business, right? You show something, then make a transaction.”
“Right.”
“You need to clearly decide what you’re going to show. What did you do when you went busking?”
It was obvious without even seeing it.
They must have only sung.
If it had been before the special makeup, that would have been fine.
Sedalbaegil had not only fame, but handsome looks as well.
I liked looking at fans’ reactions on the official website, and comments like this often came up there.
If a face is enough to justify the plot, then Lee Ion passes for now.
And it wasn’t just Lee Ion.
The rest of the members, including Gu Taehwan, were all quite good-looking.
That was why they had been able to break through the fierce preliminary competition of Coming Up Next and become final contestants.
This is a bit of a different story, but when I first began working in Korea, I hadn’t really felt that the Sedalbaegil members, aside from Lee Ion, were handsome.
Because I had lived in Western society for so long, my standards of beauty had tended to align with that side.
Angular jaws, well-developed cheekbones, narrow foreheads, masculine looks, things like that.
But now I knew the members were handsome.
“Even with special-effects makeup on, if you’d cheerfully drawn responses out of the audience and talked to them, it might have been all right. But you got awkward for no reason and just stood there singing, didn’t you?”
At my words, Lee Ion and Gu Taehwan slowly nodded.
“The same goes for Choe Jaeseong, and for Saemiro. If there’s no show, there’s no way it’ll become business.”
“Then what should we do?”
“There are two ways. Either think of something you can show in a way that isn’t about your appearance, or think of something where business is possible without showing anything.”
That was the theory, and from there, the possibilities were endless.
If the members couldn’t get a feel for it, I had intended to tell them myself, but unexpectedly, they caught on right away.
“Mm, you mean something like composition competitions, right? Singing contests would work too.”
I nodded at Gu Taehwan’s words.
South Korea may be small in landmass, but it has a broad foundation when it comes to the arts.
Compared to its population, there are truly many aspiring singers, and in line with that, there are countless contests.
If you look carefully, there are many neighborhood singing contests and the like that offer small cash prizes.
There are even more composition competitions.
“But if you monopolize too much, you might come off as unlikeable. It wouldn’t be a fair competition with the other contestants.”
Unexpectedly, the one who argued against me was Choe Jaeseong.
“No, hyung. It’s not like we’re entering the competitions using Sedalbaegil’s fame. If that’s the case, then it’s actually a good thing.”
“Hm?”
“They’re people participating in competitions to verify their skills, aren’t they? It’s not like they’re being harmed just because someone else is good.”
“Mm…”
It felt like I could see a glimpse of Choe Jaeseong’s past that he had never told me about, so I simply nodded.
He might be right.
Honestly, I don’t know how amateurs feel. My first life was already more than a hundred years ago.
“What else could there be?”
“This just occurred to me, but what about webtoon OSTs?”
“Webtoons?”
“It’s the trend these days for webtoons to have music attached to them. There are plenty of good songs, but also plenty of disappointing ones. Webtoons are content that already has its own showing, right?”
On Saemiro’s idea was pretty good.
Understanding the theory and immediately finding a realistic alternative is difficult.
But the members did better than expected.
“Then should we email the webtoon artist? Say we want to work on a song?”
“We’re unknowns, so shouldn’t we make a sample and send it? Ask them to hire us if they like it.”
“Oh, that’s good.”
“Then would games work too?”
“Games would be hard. Their music would probably already be made during the production stage.”
“Still, for renewals? Updates? When they do things like that, they might need additional music, right?”
“Mm, dramas and films obviously won’t work… Web dramas?”
“Oh, that might be possible?”
As the members began chattering away, I quietly stepped back.
It was a good approach.
If you have skill, there is so much you can do in this field.
While the members made small amounts of money like this, I just needed to land the real big shot.
Let’s see.
How much would we need to earn?
“How much do you all think we’d need to make it a luxurious trip?”
“Wouldn’t about five million won do? It’d be nice if we had some extra.”
“Five million?”
“Is that too much? Still, it’s our first overseas trip.”
“We went to America.”
“That wasn’t a trip.”
I laughed, dumbfounded by On Saemiro’s words.
I was fairly sure he had ridden the amusement park rides more enthusiastically than anyone else.
Besides, what could five people do with five million?
It felt like it would be gone just by upgrading our lodging.
“Good. You’ve got the idea now, right?”
“But Shion, you still haven’t told us what you’re going to do.”
At Gu Taehwan’s words, I shrugged.
“Whatever you imagine, I’ll bring back more than that.”
“Are you going to compose songs and sell them to an entertainment company?”
“That’s the last resort.”
Because it’s not a fun method. If the things I’ve planned don’t go well, then that’s the path I’ll choose.
“Anyway, dismissed.”
And so Sedalbaegil… no, the members wearing the masks of unknown alter egos began moving to make money in their own ways.
Now it felt like an interesting picture would finally come together.
* * *
The indie band
Youth music festivals hosted by official organizations like the nation or a city usually allow participants from ages nine to twenty-four.
Fortunately, Evening Promise’s oldest member was twenty-four, so they were able to participate.
“We can win, right?”
“Of course. We’ve been good lately.”
It was said to boost confidence, but it wasn’t actually an empty statement.
Evening Promise had been doing quite well lately.
The number of regular audience members who came to their monthly performances was a full forty.
Including various acquaintances and accidental visitors, there were usually around sixty to seventy people in the venue.
To those accustomed to popular music culture, an audience of seventy may seem like nothing, but from an indie band’s perspective, it was not.
How many bands in Hongdae could put on a show under their own name, with no guests, and draw seventy people?
Even being extremely generous, twenty teams?
In other words, they were top twenty in the world of Hongdae indie bands.
And there was a high chance there weren’t even twenty.
The reason Evening Promise’s skills had suddenly improved was, no matter what anyone said, thanks to their performance with Sedalbaegil.
They had personally witnessed Sedalbaegil perform at
Watching Sedalbaegil move, sing, and respond vividly right before their eyes, they had realized it.
Ah. Music, and performances, are supposed to be done like that.
Those with role models that shake their souls grow quickly.
Even if the genre is different.
The memory of that time had a great influence on Evening Promise and became the driving force that allowed them to grow this far.
“All right, let’s go!”
“Let’s go!”
And so Evening Promise entered the youth music festival, where thirteen teams were participating.
When they went up on stage, the onlookers gathered near Sangsang Madang and the judges applauded.
And then, they hit it big.
“That was an excellent performance. Even if this hadn’t been a youth music festival but one for adults, you would have been competitive.”
“It wasn’t completely free of amateurishness, but that actually came across as a charm.”
Praise from the audience and judges.
A stage that, even in their own opinion, had been their best.
It is not easy to deliver a performance better than practice during the real thing.
But if a team experiences that even once, their growth becomes steep.
It was Evening Promise’s good fortune.
“I think we’re going to win…!”
While the members were having that conversation, the next contestant came up.
And then.
“…”
“…”
“…
What the hell.”
They felt a wall.
In a youth music festival where most people performed under their real names or team names, it was a solo vocalist using the stage name “Mimyo.”
Large, old-fashioned horn-rimmed glasses and a face that looked somehow awkward.
She wasn’t ugly, but for some reason, she looked unnatural.
It seemed neither the audience nor the judges had gotten the impression from her appearance that she would sing well, but…
Waaaaaaaah!
Her singing was insane.
Insane enough to make an audience of barely two hundred people scream.
She was not a competitor.
She was a slaughterer.
“What would we have had to do to beat her?”
Evening Promise thought that, but they could not find an answer.
And so the grand prize, along with two million won in prize money, went to Mimyo.
* * *
While Lee Ion was slaughtering music festivals,
Webtoon artist Min Huiyeong, who was serializing under a pen name, received an email.
[Hello. I’m a huge fan of your webtoon, so I wanted to send you an original song!]
It was not the first email of its kind she had received.
Just as fan art or fan letters came in, fan songs would occasionally arrive too.
Until now, she had replied to all of them with gratitude, but she had never once thought she wanted to upload one to an episode.
With no particular thought, Min Huiyeong clicked the email and downloaded the song.
Then, the moment she heard the intro.
“…?!”
She was startled.
Wondering what this was, she put on her headset and began listening again with a reverent heart.
“…!”
She could only be even more shocked.
It was perfect.
The webtoon Min Huiyeong was serializing was a historical romance about a modern-day doctor who time-slipped to the Goryeo Dynasty and fell in love with the crown prince.
And right now was the most important point.
The moment the heroine, falsely accused of treason and facing death, revealed her true identity to the crown prince.
The moment she told the truth to the crown prince, who loathed guai li luan shen—strange phenomena, feats of strength, disorder, and spirits; unfathomable beings or events—because of his mother’s death in his childhood.
Fear and trembling.
The desperate plea to believe her.
And at the same time, the trust of believing in him.
She had been racking her brain over how to express all those emotions, blended together precariously…
But a single song solved everything.
‘Does this make any sense?’
And yet, it did.
Sometimes, a single line of poetry has greater persuasive power than a hundred pages of explanation, and a single song can shake the heart more than an hour-long video.
But it was hard to readily believe that a singer capable of stirring emotions to this degree was unknown.
The singer who had sent the email had the common name
As Min Huiyeong was listening to the song in a daze, she suddenly came to her senses in shock.
The song… was gone.
The audio had ended the moment it reached the climax and the sorrowful chorus came out.
The chorus was good enough, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that it had abruptly cut off.
Shouldn’t the chorus be repeated about two more times, and obviously there should be a second verse too?
‘It’s a m-mistake, right?’
Surely he hadn’t failed to complete it because of some kind of slump!
Min Huiyeong immediately sent an email and received a reply saying he had not made the latter half yet.
But he said he could make it quickly.
As long as she formally commissioned him.
Since this kind of expense would be covered by the webtoon agency anyway, there was nothing for Min Huiyeong to hesitate over.
And so the completed song arrived, and it was perfect.
The agency was somewhat troubled, saying the other party had named too high a price, but for something of this quality, she could even pay out of pocket.